A world wide web of LIES

When Slint reunited in 2005, I was briefly excited at the possibility of seeing them again. How brief? About the time it took their Chicago show to sell out. During those five seconds it also occurred to me that I had no transportation TO Chicago. Then they did a bunch more shows in 2007, but by that point I was officially too old to rock.

And now, this: http://www.slint.com/ (click there). I have to say, I don’t much like this new musical direction they’re taking.

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

I like their old stuff better.

So my awesome domain name (this one) disappeared for a little bit. It expired and I had no idea, until an alert reader (aka my “special lady”) pointed it out to me. I had a squat page that had the wonderful title of “the dotcom yahoo domain name at theworldwidewebdotcom.net” and a clipart of internets and a bunch of search terms.

“But I was not notified!” I said to myself. Then I remembered I registered it and gave them my old gmail address, the one I quit using when I got gmail styles on my inter-Smeat. I checked, and lo and behold there were lots of mails, starting with “domain expiring in two months” to “domain expiring in five minutes” to “we’re not going to hold on to this forever, you know” to “pay up, dipshit!!!”

So anyway, what’d I miss while I was gone?

Wisdom.

Get it? It’s on account of their name looks like an abbreviation of my hometown? Maybe when this bubble bursts (dot-bomb 2.0, anyone?) and wipes these jokers out, the local Chambre O’Commerce can put the domain name to better use.

Anyway, they seem to have this weird idea that throwing in a completely unrelated thumbnail image in with each search result does something good. Example:

Maybe if that really was the cover of my CD, it’d sell better?

And then we pass the savings on to you.

(That title up there’s copyrighted, by the way.)

List of legendary creatures from Japan

The best part is how specific some of these creatures are. My favorites, in list form (of course):

• Kappa—a famous water monster with a water-filled head and a love of cucumbers
• Kurage-no-hinotama—a jellyfish which floats through the air as a fireball
• Makura-gaeshi—the pillow-moving spirit (this one seems to like to torment me nightly!)
• Tankororin—an unharvested persimmon which becomes a monster
• Tōfu-kozō—a spirit child carrying a block of tofu
• Uma-no-ashi—a horse’s leg which dangles from a tree and kicks passersby

Remember Harris’s Lament, from TV? On one particular episode of the Barney Miller show of yore, Det. Shepherd Harris was trying to register a domain name for his website (it was to be a website about websites). After much searching, he cries out, “all the good ones are taken!”

Well, this one can be taken, by YOU! Seriously, have you seen the garglemesh that passes for domain names on these web 2.0 sites? Most of them sound like something my stomach does after too spicy of food. And it’s only going to get worse. I predict in a few years even this one (theworldwideweb, dot com… dot net) will be desirable. Ten thousand dollars desirable? Only if you act now!

Let me be the first to say that there is nothing new under the sun. Thus, a blog!